Crafting with Cole – Episode 3

Cole the Crafter! Can she make it? Cole the Crafter! Yes, she can!

Hello and welcome, to Episode three of Cooking – er, Crafting – with Cole!

Of course, I’m Nicole the Cooker, Crafter and everything that starts with ‘c’ and ends with ‘er’! Well, not EVERYthing . . . Anyway, today we’re making scrapbooks/photo albums!

Okay, so today you will need: Pictures! Up to 24, which seems like lots, but isn’t really. And you also need a glue stick, a glue gun, a paper cutter, scissors, a pencil, a ruler, three or four sheets of cardstock (one of these can be a different colour) . . .

. . . and then extra paper, stickers, glitter glue, markers, stamps, whatever you want for decorating.

Sort of a side note for your humans: print your pictures at 1.5 inches by 2 inches and then if your ink is the kind that sort of rubs off, cover them in packing tape. ForestPoodle says she’s going to avoid packing taping things from now on though, because it causes a lot of extra bits of plastic waste. I agree.

Now, let’s have an ad break while you are looking for your ingredients.

Are you bored, with nothing to do?

Are you looking for something funny?

Do you need to see a random picture?

Are you craving snow in the middle of July?

Do you like books?

Whether you answered ‘no’ to these questions or ‘yes’, I have just the thing! A picture of my sister Sophie, in her backpack and summer clothes, sitting on a bookshelf with fluffy boots on!

This limited edition print is available at nicolescookingads.com until the next episode, so hurry and get yours today!

Okay, so now I’m just clearing off my space, which is not a step, unless you actually have nowhere to work.

Take out your ruler, pencil and paper cutter . . .

And mark out rectangles that are 2.5 by 6.5 inches. I think I ended up getting four per sheet of giant paper.

And, of course, cut them out!

My paper cutter, though very nice, is having a hard time, so I’m switching to a human one.

Except now I’m too small. . .

Hey, ForestPoodle! Could you help me?

Okay, fine.

And now you need to fold each of these pieces in half, short end to short end. Please don’t fold it hot-dog style!

And now fold it again, 1/4 of an inch on either side of that first fold. I measured mine carefully, but I guess you could eyeball it.

Make it so that the second two folds go the opposite way.

From the top, it should look like this.

Now that you’ve got all those pieces ready to go, you can start the fun part!

Gluing in all the pictures! I’m doing it carefully with lots of drying time because I don’t like pictures sticking together, but if you do, just glue them all at once.

And while you’re waiting for some things to dry, you can decorate others.

See?

Mine are just glued in the centre, but you can do whatever you want.

I also captioned my photos at the beginning.

You can also cut out paper shapes to glue on.

I’m making some holly for my Christmas one.

And then, glitter glue!!

I really like glitter glue.

And it looks so pretty! See?

I even used really small stickers that needed a human-sized pin to put on!

You can also cut out strips of paper . . .

. . . and glue them on to look like tape.

Here’s my page from camp in 2019.

I think it needs a sticker here.

Okay, now this is not a step, don’t mind me, I’m just cleaning up, because . . .

*careful stacking of everything* . . . because . . .

We’re having our first ever guest appearance! Please welcome, my cousin, Saila!

Also, ForestPoodle88, our cameraperson, would like to apologize for the bad lighting, but I guess she’s not actually apologizing? That wording always confuses me. If you want to apologize, just do it! Anyway . . .

Hello Saila! Welcome to Cooking – er, Crafting – with Cole!

Hello! I brought some glitter glue, Nicole, and my pages.

Awesome!

Here, I’ll show you a few of how I’ve been decorating mine.

Aww, that looks so nice!

Thanks!

What picture’s that?

It’s from my first photoshoot. We went outside to a tree.

Yes! Trees are great! And your page looks so cool!

Okay, are you ready for glitter glue?

Not quite yet, Nicole . . .

*3 minutes later*

How about now?

Sure!

Aww, yeah! Glitter glue time! Sorry, I just really, really, really like glitter glue.

I can tell. :)

And we’ve got such nice colours! I don’t think you’re putting enough on though, Saila.

Hey! I like it like this!

Anyway, thank you Saila for coming over to be on my show!

Anytime, Nicole! It was a pleasure to be here.

Bye, Saila!

Goodbye Nicole!

Okay, so by now, hopefully you’ve got your pages all nice and pretty.

Oh, and here’s a same of my sister Victoria’s pages. She put the pictures a bit off to the side and just captioned them. So you don’t have to decorate them if you don’t want.

So now we’re going to cut our covers. If you want a different colour of cardstock, go ahead! I’ve got a darker blue. So you’re going to cut out two pieces that are 2 1/2 by 6 1/4 inches (or 2.5 by 6.75, if that helps).

Fold a line 6.5 inches from one short edge and then another the same distance from the other edge. There should be 1/4 of an inch of space between these two lines. That your spine! Isn’t it so nice and prickly?

Now glue those two pieces together so the cover is thicker.

Take all your pages, and put them in order. Or don’t, if that’s what you want.

Now put a little elastic band around them so they stay together and take the pages, your cover and a cool glue gun to your human. There’s no pictures of this part, but you can hear what happened.

Hi, ForestPoodle! Could you please glue my photo album together?

Nicole, glue’s not that complicated, I’m sure you can do it yourself.

Uh, no. It’s HOT glue, and my skin’s vinyl. Not happening.

Oh, you want hot glue. Sure I’ll do it.

Can you do Sophie’s and Toria’s too? Yeah? Thanks!

So I got my photo album glued – you just put a line of glue down the spine, squish the pages in, wait for it to dry and remove the elastic band. Well, YOU don’t do it unless it’s a human reading all this, but you know.

And then I cut a piece of sticker paper (you can use regular paper and glue) and cut a taggy for my name and stuck it on.

Sophie and Toria did the same.

And that’s all! Now you’ve got a wonderful photo to look back on and sigh wistfully! Just kidding, but sighing wistfully is fun so you should try it some time.

Oh, and yesterday was our blog’s third anniversary (can you believe it?), but ForestPoodle forgot to do something, but I still want to thank you all for reading and being a part of the Hedgehog Hollow crew! You’re the people and dolls who keep inspiring us!